Empires of Native America: Mayan and Aztec Societies Before European Contact

Okay, here we go. You're listening to the American History Experience. I'm your host, Ryan S. Pettingill, and welcome to Episode 1 of Volume 1. The episode that we have here for you today is entitled "Empires of Native America." As a professional historian, it's always fascinated me the utter lack of attention that pre-Columbian native societies received with respect to the way that history is taught in American classrooms. So today, what we're going to be talking about are various different theories as to how there came to be life in the Western Hemisphere. We'll also take note of a couple societies that thrived long before Europeans started showing up, and we'll also discuss various theories as to what happened to those societies, and in some cases, how and why they went into decline. But in any case, I hope you enjoy this first episode. "Empires of Native America" is the first lecture that I will give my early American history class. Now, you have to understand that at this point in the semester, the only thing that we've really talked about would be the syllabus and expectations for the semester. So we've got an entire semester of work in front of us. And the first slide of this lecture is entitled "What is America?" In those all kinds of different ways that students can interpret this, and to be sure, they do interpret it very differently from semester to semester. But you have to understand that this slide has all kinds of different photos and pictures on it. For example, it features a map of what would become the United States, but instead of borders from the States, it's just littered with different flags from all across the world, not just here in North America, but all across the world. Right underneath that is a painting depicting a scene of pilgrims having a meal with Native Americans. I think you can see where the artist was going with that one. Across the slide is a photo out of a Native American, a guy that is probably more of a modern American history class. It's the Warrior Crazy Horse. But underneath Crazy Horse, what you have is one of the more famous activists in all of American history, a labor activist by the name of Dolores Yorta. Yorta is going to be very, very instrumental with respect to the formation of the United Farm Workers Union. And right underneath her is an African-American civil war veteran that was a member of the 54th Massachusetts. And if you continue to listen to this podcast, you'll come to the realization that the 54th Massachusetts is the first all-black military regiment in American history. But right squarely there in the middle is a photograph of President Abraham Lincoln. And ultimately, what I'll do is I'll ask the class to point out the American on that slide. And the looks that I get from the class on, let's be honest, day one, they look a little bit confused. As a matter of fact, they don't really look confused in so much as they look like they think they're being set up. This question is so obvious. It's so easy that there's got to be a catch to it. But usually, after a little bit of awkward first few seconds, some brave soul raises her or his hand. And they say, aren't they all Americans? And that's the whole point of this question. Because yes, they are all Americans. And I ask them why they think I put all of these photos, this big collage together. What's the point of all of this? And ultimately, sometimes after a robust discussion, and sometimes after a brief discussion, somebody comes up with the idea that we are a nation of immigrants, right? Even if you could prove that you were 100% Native American, which by the way would be incredibly difficult, but let's just say that you could, right? More and more evidence is beginning to come to light that suggests even the earliest of Americans came from somewhere else. So when I say that this initial lecture is a trendsetter, it very much is a trendsetter for the semester. The idea being America is very unique in this respect. There's been all kinds of other great civilizations in the history of the world, but America is relatively unique in the sense that we are a nation of immigrants. We have been built by immigrants and we have been rebuilt by immigrants. Okay? So I guess the next logical question becomes, how did we all get here? How there came to be life in the Americas is a question that has puzzled scientists, historians, and other academics for years and years. And it's also a question where there is some variety of thought with respect to what the answer ultimately is. But before we get into that, I want to introduce you to a term within this series. And this is going to be important. So you're going to want to take either a mental note. If you're really dedicated, you'll jot this down. The term that I want to introduce to you would be Pangaea. Okay? For those of you that have studied geology, you can tell me that what Pangaea means is supercontinent. Scientists believe that millions and millions of years ago, all of Earth's landmass was one big unit. Okay? And it was one gigantic continent if you want to look at it that way. Well, over the course of millions of years, what you had were natural disasters. You had volcanic eruptions, you had earthquakes, you had ice ages, and ultimately what this did was not only break apart the supercontinent over the course of millions of years, continents began to drift. And ultimately, they would take the shape that we think of the world as today. But the issue there is over the course of millions of years, plants, animals, organisms are going to get separated as these continents continue to drift. Now, with respect to Pangaea, I'm going to introduce you to one of numerous theories with respect to how there can be life in the Americas. Scientists believe that thousands of years ago, the Earth's temperature was a lot cooler than it is right now. Now, naturally, this led to lower sea levels, and it also led to parts of the ocean being locked in ice. So I want you to envision the modern-day U.S. state of Alaska, okay? Not that far from Russia. It's directly across the Bearing Sea from Russia. And what scientists believe is thousands of years ago, there was a land bridge that they refer to as the Bearing Straight. Now, there's another one of those terms that you should probably have some sort of mental note so that you can come back and refer to it relatively quickly. But the fact is, scientists believe that the earliest forms of human life actually came from eastern Asia. And what they were doing is they were following the wild herds, right? Wild game that they were hunting, or perhaps they were following greener pastures. They were foragers. They gathered their food, whether that be fruits or vegetables or what have you, and they just simply found their way over to what you and I call North America. Well, again, we're talking about thousands of years ago. And when the Bearing Straight's land bridge melted for all intents and purposes, ultimately what you had was those people that came across that were cut off and they were isolated for the next three, five thousand years. Now, again, this idea of the Bearing Straight is one of numerous theories as to how there came to be human life in the western hemisphere. There have been other studies and very, very well done studies that argue that the Americas were actually populated by people that came VSC and hit the central part of South America and basically populated the continents from the South to the North. Nonetheless, what I'd like you to understand is before Christopher Columbus bumped into the New World, what comes to be known as Mesa, America had more than 40 million inhabitants that called it home. Now, by Mesa, America, what I mean is central America. And in particular, if you think of the modern day state of Mexico, you'll have a very good understanding as to where I mean, okay? 40 million inhabitants called Mesa, America home and another 7 million called what would later be known as the United States and Canada home. Now, think about that for just a second. Those are two very different numbers. 40 million is a lot more than 7 million and you have to ask the question, why are there so many people living in Mesa, America? And I do ask my classes, why do you think that there are so many other people living in Mesa, America and North America is far more sparsely populated? It's usually a little bit of discussion, but ultimately people come to the realization that it's generally easier to grow food, to cultivate food, in Mesoamerica, primarily because the growing season is longer. It's going to be a lot different in North America because you've got a much more robust and much longer winter season there. In any case, I need you to understand that it's not just the climates that's going to set Mesoamerica apart from North America. The civilizations that are going to take root in these two different regions are going to be very different from one another. As a matter of fact, I believe that you're going to come to the realization that the civilizations that would call Mesoamerica home had a lot more in common with other ancient civilizations similar to the Egyptians, similar to the Romans. You'll see what I mean here in just a second. If you were to ask the average American to describe an indigenous society pre-Columbian context, what you'd probably get was what I call the Hollywood version of history, you know, TPs and Native Americans riding around on horses hunting buffalo. Now, there's an element of truth to that, however, that description really doesn't do justice to the vast majority of Native Americans that existed in the Americas long before any European showed up. Now although there are numerous different examples of civilizations that rose and fell and thrived and went into decline, I'm going to focus on two, okay? The first of which is going to take root in the southern part of Mesoamerica. If you think modern-day Peru, you'll understand what I'm talking about. That's going to take root around about 700 BC and of course I'm referring to the Mayans. Now there's something I want you to understand about the Mayans. They have far more in common with ancient civilizations like Egypt or even Rome than they do with that description that we talked about just a second ago. The description that really emphasized North American indigenous societies. Now what I mean by that is that these are societies that were ruled by a prince class, okay? These were people, kings and queens, really what I'm getting at here are monarchs and of course they claimed authority from the gods. It's not that much different than what you would have gotten in ancient Egypt. And by the way, with respect to what happened to those rulers when they died, well they went to a very similar place and of course what I'm talking about here would be the temples. If you looked at the architecture of an Egyptian temple, a society that existed not only independent of the Mayans but on the other side of the world, it bears a striking resemblance to the architecture of a Mayan temple, okay? And the whole idea here is the concept of an afterlife. And in this afterlife you need to take the possessions of your worldly life into this afterlife and so this was a very stratified society, the people that built those pyramids on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean would have been the ruled. These were people that were told what to do and when to do it and that's really what I mean when I say a stratified society. You had a ruling class that told people what to do and how to do it and the primary reason for this at least in so far as the Mayans are concerned is that it's far easier to accumulate wealth in Mesa America as it is in what would become known as North America. And the reason has everything to do with what we were talking about when it comes to climate just a few minutes ago. When you're able to accumulate things like food sources and other forms of what might loosely be called wealth it's going to lead to a division in what we would think of as classes. And over the course of dozens and dozens of years this class that ends up on top is going to think of itself as a ruling class and of course they need to explain how they came to be such and a lot of times what that involves is well God wants it that way. And the Mayans in that capacity anyway have a lot more in common with respect to what we think of as the ancient Egyptians and other ancient societies on that side of the world as opposed to what most Americans would describe as an indigenous American society. The bottom line is this the Mayans were an incredibly complex and advanced society. Most people that know anything about Mayan civilization at all will tell you about their calendar okay the Mayan calendar because the Mayan calendar stopped in the year 2012. Now many people know this because they saw that movie that came out years ago that was succinctly entitled 2012 but you have to understand that the Aztec calendar was based on one solar year how long it took the earth to orbit the sun. Now that in and of itself drives at the idea that the Mayans were an incredibly sophisticated society at a time period when Europeans not only assumed that the earth was the center of the universe but really didn't understand how and why there were things like seasons or you know really even what the earth was was it round or otherwise the Mayans had developed this idea of what you and I would call astronomy okay. Now understand that in and of itself makes the Mayans an incredibly complex society and it also begs the question how they were able to pull this off well there's something that I want you to think about if you know where your next meal is coming from you don't have to sit back and worry about how you're going to put food in the table you know that there's somebody that's in charge of that and they're doing a good job of that then what that's going to allow other groups of Mayans to is diversify their work you're going to see the emergence of astronomers you're going to see the emergence of mathematicians. Another thing that the Mayans have in common with the old world you might say is that they develop the concept of zero right. The Middle Eastern world really was this was the light of the old world in the medieval time period. The Middle Eastern world was a civilization of cities and universities and medicine and it was Middle Eastern mathematicians that had developed the concept of nothingness and this was something that the Greeks just simply couldn't wrap their brains around but nonetheless another society on the other side of the world had independently come up with this concept within mathematics as well. Now the other thing that I want you to understand about the Mayans is that they were a civilization of great great cities okay. The capital of the Mayan Empire is going to be known as Tikal and it's going to boast over 300,000 residents at its height and that would put it well up there with any European counterpart even as Europe is beginning to come out of these dark ages okay. So this is really what I mean when I say that the Mayans were a very sophisticated and complex society. Now I want you to ask yourself something when the Spanish began to go into Central and South America and they began to carve up what was once upon a time the Mayan Empire the Mayan civilization ask yourself what the Spanish thought the Mayans were right. How do you think the Spanish thought of the Mayan civilization when they would come upon some of their ruins some of these temples the ruins of some of these cities what do you think that they thought and of course for the most part what these early conquistadors assumed were that these Mayans were savages. Now part of this has to do with European bigotry and the other aspect of this has to do with the fact that you know any writing if you even want to call it that any writings that these Spanish conquistadors had come across with respect to the Mayans didn't look like writing as far as they were concerned it certainly didn't look like anything resembling Spanish or any other Western European language for that matter. It just like look like caveman drawings well the fact was the the Spanish didn't really know what they were looking at. And over the course of hundreds of years what begins to happen would be there would be more scientific research applied to what the Spanish were coming across when they come on these Mayan ruins. There's an example that I usually use in my classes and it involves something that you should probably take note of and that would be the Palenque plate okay. Now for your purposes here Palenque was a Mayan city and the plate element of this was side of one of these models. my intemples. Well, upon first glance, it just looks like some savage was, you know, making scrapes, making, you know, engravements into the side of this temple. But over the course of time, what the Spanish are going to come to realize is that the Mayan language was very different than Spanish, very different from English for that matter. It had a lot more in common with Mandarin, the kind of language that is spoken all throughout China. Whereas Spanish and some accent English is a phonetic language, different sounds have different meanings. The Mayan language really thrived as a symbolic language, very similar to Mandarin. So these symbols weren't doodlings at all. They weren't the musings of these ancient savages. What the Palenque plate actually did was tell the ancient history of the city of Palenque. Okay. And so what I need you to understand here is that we're only beginning to understand what Mayan civilization really consisted of. And I believe that in the coming years, once we begin to put more dots together when it comes to this Mayan language and more ruins are on earth, we'll have a far different understanding of what life was like in ancient Maya. But like all things, the Mayan civilization had to come to an end. We believe that around about 800 AD, Mayan civilization began to go into decline. And we believe that there are three primary reasons for this. One was climate change, okay. A city is essentially a population that couldn't feed itself unless it imported food and other resources from the outskirts of its area. Okay. Now, when you plow fields and you cultivate it for agriculture, essentially what you're doing is you're turning over the soil and you're exposing it to the elements, which is not a problem as long as you get rain and other forms of precipitation that moisten that soil and rejuvenate it. But when you have drought, when you have a lack of precipitation, ultimately what it leads to is soil erosion. And so, this soil erosion is going to lead to the failure of numerous crops, including but not limited to do the most important crop. And of course I mean maize corn, okay. So climate change is ultimately going to lead to famine, which is going to throw Mayan civilization into decline. We also believe that there was eventually an erosion of a Mayan middle class. Through the course of time, this ruling class became smaller and smaller and smaller, but ultimately the subjects, what you and I would think of as the working poor, began to grow larger and larger and larger. And what was being squeezed out, almost all together, was any semblance of what we would recognize as a middle class. So you had two different streams. You had the ultra wealthy and you had the ultra poor. And there's only so long that that relationship can exist. But most of all, we believe that what did in the Mayan civilization was a recurring invasion of a nomadic warrior-like people that referred to themselves as the Meshika. When I say Meshika, of course, I'm talking about the group of people that we have come to know as the Aztecs. Now, as I said before, the Aztecs were a nomadic warrior-like people that by the time that the Spanish show up would have conquered most of Mesoamerica. More on that in just a second. But in terms of a point of origin, we believe that the Aztecs originated somewhere between Lake Texacoco and the ancient city of Tenotechlan. Now, if Tenotechlan sounds familiar to you, like you've heard that from somewhere, it's probably because you have. It's still around a day. You can still go visit it today, but you call it Mexico City today. So with respect to the heart of the Aztecs, the heart of the Aztec Empire is going to exist a little bit further to the north than the Mayans. It's going to exist in the central part of Mesoamerica, and the Aztec Empire is really going to be a very vivid example of an American civilization that not only grew up but really thrived before European context. Now, there's something that I'd like you to understand about the Aztecs. They are going to establish this vast stretching empire. We believe that it went as far north as the Rio Grande, so bordering North America, and as far south as the modern-day state of Panama. So this is a huge region of the world. And any time that you've got that many people living under the same roof, ultimately you're going to have them influencing you, you influencing them. Now, there's a term for this, and there's a term that I'd like you be familiar with as far as this series goes. And that term is Creolization. Creolization. Let me float the definition before we go any further. What I mean by Creolization is a blending of cultures. And so to really drive at this point home, what I'll ask my classes is when I say the word Creol, what comes to mind, and most people would say Louisiana, but in particular New Orleans. And that's actually a really good example. And the reason that it's such a good example is if you think about New Orleans, it's a little bit French, but it's also a little bit Southern. It's a little bit Caribbean, but it's also a little bit of everything. And so it's a blending of cultures that ultimately produces this really unique blended culture. And I think that you could make that case for the Aztecs. And the reason that I say that is the Aztec culture, broadly defined, had a lot of similarities with that of the Mayans who came before them. The writing system was very similar between the Mayans and the Aztecs. The architecture, if you think about the way that Aztec temples are built, they have a very striking similarity to that of the Mayans that came before them. And by the way, they're using those things for the same purposes, the preservation of the ruling class. The trade routes that were carved all across Mesoamerica, primarily by the Mayans, they were not only preserved but in ways they were improved by the Aztecs. So the Aztecs borrowed heavily from other civilizations, most importantly for our purposes, the Mayans, but there were other civilizations that were influential on the Aztecs. And of course you can't help but to influence those people around you at the same time. Now, we talked about how and why the Mayans went into decline. And I think that we need to wrap up by giving a little summary on the Aztecs as well. The bottom line was the Aztec Empire basically was crushed by its own weight. Okay? We'll get into this a little bit later when we talk about the conquest of the Americas, predominantly by the Spanish, at least that's where we'll start. But the fact of the matter was, by the time that the Spanish showed up, the Aztecs were ruling over a large group of people, groups plural actually. And many of these individuals really didn't appreciate the fact that the Aztecs were extracting both the treasure and tribute from their societies. And so in a way, what's going to happen is there's going to be resentment and a lot of bad blood between these indigenous societies that have been conquered by the Aztecs and the Aztecs proper. And in a way, when the Spanish conquistador, Hernán Cortez, makes landfall in 1519, the groups that are really going to befriend him are these groups on the outskirts of the Aztec Empire that saw the Aztecs of the greater of the two evils. You'll see what I'm talking about a little bit later in this series, but for right now I want to provide a summary and wrap up. I want to thank you for joining us for the first episode of the American History Experience. I hope you enjoyed it. And I want to leave you with two points as we wrap up here today. The first of which involves the instruction of American history, where it intersects with indigenous pre-Columbian societies. I'm hopeful that by now you can see that there's a lot more that binds us humans together as a race than that that sets us apart. I'm also hopeful that you can see direct Native American influences on American history. This concept of Crealization is going to be something that we'll come back to again and again in this series. You'll see it in the next episode when we talk about the indigenous societies of North America, and you'll also see it. all throughout the colonial region with these various European settlements. That's all for now and again I hope that you'll join us next time.